The cat is finally out of the bag. A California appellate court, ruling that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool their children, pinned its decision on this ominous quotation from a 47-year-old case, “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

There you have it; a primary purpose of government schools is to train schoolchildren “in loyalty to the state.” …

Last week, the appellate court surprised everyone by agreeing to rehear the case. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the judges “hinted at a re-evaluation of its entire Feb. 28 ruling by inviting written arguments from state and local education officials and teachers’ unions”.

On top of that, state Schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell says he thinks homeschooling is legal and favors choice in education.

That’s reasonable news. But why is education the business of government? It’s taken for granted that the state is every child’s ultimate parent, but there’s no justification for that in a free society. Parents may not be perfect — some are pretty bad — but a cold, faceless bureaucracy is no better.

Locally, home-schooling parents worry about the copy cat effect. States who see what has transpired in California might get bright ideas to adopt similar credential mandates, said Hermitt, a married mom who home-schools Jordan and Jackson.

â€œIt might cause a ripple effect,â€ she said.

…

The California ruling goes against the grain of parental responsibility. Mom and dad are supposed to be a childâ€™s first teacher, whether they home-school or not.

The ruling appears even more absurd when you take education out the equation and apply it to other parental roles. Basically, it would mean that I canâ€™t teach my son how to grill jerk chicken because Iâ€™m not a chef. I canâ€™t teach my daughter how to parallel park because Iâ€™m not a certified driving instructor.

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Gist of comments:

— ‘someone’ needs to make sure homeschooling parents are teaching their kids, not beating them
— probably not all homeschooling parents do thorough research about teaching their own children
— fundamentalists will brainwash their children
— anyone who has children is too stupid to teach anyone
— cashing in on the homeschooling craze
— homeschooled children aren’t under the eye of a bureaucracy
— accreditation needed to ensure standards
— another ad that seems to follow any California ruling report
— more accountability for everyone in Georgia because private schools do not require teacher certification, either
— why should only public school students be entitled to testing standards?
— everyone from teachers to kids should be tested every year
— test scores of homeschooled kids higher than that of the average public school student
— abolish the Department of Education
— California case mis-combined homeschooling with child abuse
— California’s legal system is a mess

The case was initiated by the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services after a home-schooled child reportedly complained of physical abuse by his father. A lawyer assigned to two of the family’s eight children invoked the truancy law to get the children enrolled in a public school and away from their parents. So a single case of parental abuse is being used to promote the registration of all parents who crack a book for their kids. If this strikes some readers as a tad East German, we know how you feel.

Regarding your March 22 editorial “Certifying Parents” criticizing the California court that ruled that parents cannot “home school” their children without government certification: I am conservative enough to reflexively balk at most attempts by government to force fiat compliance. Yet I have no such dread of requiring some standard of excellence for anyone seeking to teach, regardless of their venue.

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“Certifying Parents” aptly describes the failure of California’s public-schooling monopoly, and why so many parents want out. Thanks to a handful of State Assembly members, a record-setting five parental choice bills are being introduced this legislative session. This is the first time in six years that any such legislation has been introduced in the Golden State, and thus far California leads the nation for the most parental choice bills introduced this year.

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The second question asks: Does the state have a more compelling interest than parents in the education of children? Again, the answer is clearly “no.” Although a well-educated citizenry is in our society’s best interests, professional educators face little accountability and few compelling deadlines when their efforts fail to produce satisfactory results. Schools will always have next year’s students to “fix” what ails them. Indeed, this has been their approach for the past three decades. Parents do not share this luxury; in each child there is only a very small, finite period of time in which to achieve results.

It is not unusual for appeals courts to reconsider decisions, and the result is often a minor revision that leaves the original conclusion unchanged. But the three-judge panel in the homeschooling case hinted at a re-evaluation of its entire Feb. 28 ruling by inviting written arguments from state and local education officials and teachers’ unions.

I don’t know if it is better to put all the new California reports in the comments section of the previous California entries, or to note all the reports in a fresh blog entry. On the one hand, the reports are all saying much the same thing, but they have strayed from the cause of it all.

What started as a complaint of parental child abuse and neglect ended last week in a state appellate court ruling on home schooling.

How agencies and courts can go from the one to the other has us wondering what is going on with some of the institutions we have established to serve and protect us.

The ruling has no immediate effect and won’t be enforced, as it is likely to be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

On the other, the number of reports is a story in itself.

I flipped a mental coin, and giving the story of the stories a fresh entry won the toss. Now, all I have to do is figure out whether listing the reports by medium, or geographically, or chronologically. Time for trial and error.

There are more reports that I didn’t include. I got tired of copying and pasting, and the program got to the point that it was choking. Enough’s enough.

Fyi, all reports from World Net Daily (WND), and any reports that invoke either Hitler or the Nazis, have not been included. To me, WND’s reporting is of the ‘throw in everything but the kitchen sink’ variety so that the tone is more emotional than factual. I don’t find it helpful. For anything about Hitler & pals, the library should have some comprehensive history books.